Sites for Budding Beginners

By Grant Hewlett
Posted Friday, December 3, 2004

So you want to put up a web page? As a relative newcomer myself to the magical world of web sites - I only went online in July of '99, and I didn't even know how to send emails - I have picked up many valuable tips from the Jaydee newsletter. Most of the articles though are directed towards the pro and semi pro, but what about the budding beginner? Before you can get to appreciating the finer points of the Jaydee feature articles on web site design and promotion etcetera, you have to get that page up, and where do you start? The following is a basic step by step for the beginner that will help get them onto the main road of web site construction.

To start: First, set up a file, and keep everything that is going to be related to your page/site together in this file. Then open a blank web page on your browser. If you were in Netscape, you would do this through COMPOSER. When you have a page opened and saved, insert an image, any image, just for the sake of this example.

To do this, you go to INSERT, choose your image from the menu, and click it into your page. Then (if in COMPOSER) go to FORMAT and choose PAGE COLORS AND PROPERTIES, and pick a color for your page background. Then place a button at the bottom of your page. Buttons are used to link your pages.

Repeat this process again, and create a second page with a button. Choose LINK on the main menu, and link your first page to the second. Now go back to the first page, and link the button there to your second page. Then link the button on your second page, back to the first. Now test out your links in the preview mode on your browser. If the links work okay, then you're ready to upload these example pages to your site.

To upload pages to your site space, you will need and FTP engine. FTP, means File Transfer Protocol. An FTP engine, is a software device which enables you to transfer your pages (files) from your hard drive to your site. The most recommended FTP engine for beginners, is the WS-FTP PRO 6.5. Here is how you can get one.

Go into a site called Tucows at , where you'll find almost everything under the sun that any computer buff could want. When you get into Tucows, in the first screen, click on Win 95/98, or Mac, whatever your system is. In the second screen, click on your region, general; and in the third screen, on your region local. This will take you to the fourth screen where you find the box: NETWORK TOOLS, and here you click on FTP ARCHIE. This will take you into the final screen, where you will scroll down to the very last item on the page: which is the WS-FTP PRO 6.5, and download it. This may take about fifteen minutes. After down loading, you will find two little yellow icons on your desktop.

Double click on the top one, the FTP-pro, not the FTP-explorer. When you open the FTP engine, fill in the boxes with your server address, your user name and password, and then click on QUICK CONNECT. This will bring up a split screen. What is on the left side of the screen, is what is on your hard drive, and what is on the right screen, is what is on your site.

To upload, in the left hand box, choose your web page file in whatever drive it's in, click and open it. You will see the two entries for the web pages you have just designed. Hi-light the first one, and then in the middle of the two screens, where you see two arrows, one pointing left and one pointing right, click on the one pointing right and this will upload your page to your site. Follow through the same way for the second page, and your site is up!

This is a very, very basic step by step, and there is a whole lot more to learn, but I know that I would have liked to read something like this when I was starting out back in July. Good luck!

About the Author
Grant Hewlett of New Paradigm Productions. Grant Hewlett is a graphic artist, copywriter, and host of two off the wall New Age web sites, which can be found at (http://www3.sympatico.ca/newparadigm), and
(http://uranus.spaceports.com/~grantman/).